Monday, December 31, 2012

Several weeks ago Matt and I asked Elphine and Alouicious what they planned to resolve in the New Year, or, to put it another way, what resolutions they might like to make.

"For my New Year's Revolutions" Elphine said, relishing each word, "I will listen to all five volumes of The Story of the World, listen to the Whole Bible, talk less about myself, and be nicer to everyone."
Alouicious was less pious. "I" he said, "resolve to be more awesome."

No matter how often I try to get Elphine to say 'resolution' she persists with 'revolution', partly, I am sure, to spite me, and partly because it is cooler to plan a revolution than a resolution. Who are we kidding? Wouldn't we all like the whole world to be quickly, even if bloodily, better, not slowly and painstakingly improved in tiny ways that the stranger walking by wouldn't even know about? Last year I quietly settled myself to the loosing of lots and lots of weight--to get down to where I was before all the children, imagine--and to read through the Bible in the year, both of which I've basically, though not perfectly, accomplished. But the nose upturned young lady at the jewelry counter to whom I was trying to explain that the earring she'd sold me three days before broke the moment it came out of the tissue paper didn't know that I am much more awesome now than I was last year. I couldn't say out loud, "You shouldn't think I don't deserve to wear these earrings because, in fact, they will look fine on me and I know I'm not looking as fancy as you with all your necklaces and hair, but last year you would have despised me as much, if not more."

So this year, apart from resolving not to hate that young lady, but instead to pray for her or something (does it date me that I keep calling her young?), I am also resolving to
-finally read The Lord of the Rings even if it kills me
-read through the Bible again but in a different order
-post at least 200 times on this blog over the year
and of course
-be more awesome.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Am sitting here holding a couple of kids who feel better but who are pokey and puny after a long night and day of sick, and watching Elf. Vomit and a movie where Will Farrell eats spaghetti covered in syrup--its a fitting way to mark ten years of ordination. Ten years ago on this day, which must have been a Friday or a Monday or a Sunday or something, I had dressed Elphine up in a beautiful little velvet green dress and stuffed myself and my awesome haircut into something black and spent the evening with Matt and Good Shepherd and lots of other people from around Binghamton. That old church was never so full as that night.

And now I'm still wearing black and I finally have an awesome haircut again--took ten years to get it right. But now the kids dress themselves and tell me what to wear and run over by themselves to church, this big huge new church, that is filling up. And now, to counterbalance all this nostalgia and Memorial Sitting Around, I'm going to do a bunch of disgusting laundry. Because that's what the cross is about, probably.

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Very very grateful to have finally received the grace and mercy of The Post Office in the matter of Receiving A New Computer Cord. Well, of course, we ordered the cord and paid for the cord and expedited the cord, but it ultimately rested with the gods of the post as to whether they would let us have it in the end. And I think you know what I mean by 'let us have it'.

Also very grateful to have only had to stand in line for an hour and a half to mail a few flat packages and purchase some stamps. Expected it to be, perhaps, the whole day of standing there. And then paid Less than Fifty dollars for this enterprise. Like Whole Dollars Less. The people standing on either side of me, in this line, were trying to smile cheerfully but one was twitching weirdly and another looked to have actual tears in her eyes. I was saying quietly to myself, 'stamps.com, blast it all, stamps.dot.com.'

So here I am, veritably plugged in to the inter web superhighway and ready to catch desperately up on a few things like email, wasting all that lost time on facebook and doing a little tiny bulletin for the Christmas Pageant. In spite of my great loss the Lord was merciful to me. I sat around freaking out for a whole half a day but then, surely inspired by the Holy Spirit, the alien thought struck me that I could, perhaps, rearrange the order of my week. In the absence of a computer I forced myself to catch up on laundry, complete all my Christmas shopping, wrap piles of stocking presents and get a proper haircut.

And while I have been rushing about, you might wonder, what has everyone else been doing?

Matt has been sitting under a pile of books all week muttering to himself about the Magnificat. I saw a look in his eye two weeks ago and realized that he was planning to carry on with Mark through the Christmas season (where are we in Mark? In the section about corban?) and had the presence of mind to throw a temper tantrum. After a measured amount of shouting and hand waving, he saw things from my view.

The children have been playing wildly, on one end of the spectrum, and on the other (Elphine and Alouicious) writing long chapter stories about Christmas. I haven't had time to read them yet but seeing that they've been carefully written and stapled together and given title pages I feel perhaps this would not be the moment to come out with my red pencil and my clever and critical eye, but rather to put a bow around them and leave them out for "Santa".

Along with a little glass of sherry. And not cookies. Blech. "Santa" wants a large pork pie.

Friday, December 14, 2012

one
My computer cord seems to be taking its last dying breath and I am in the last ten minutes of the battery charge. So it may be that this will by my last blog gasp before Christmas. WHAT A HORRIBLE THOUGHT.
two
The children are supposed to be running around picking up "quickly" so as to be able to go hear a friend in a concert tonight. But instead of that, it seems they are cleaning up a massive spill of water on the kitchen floor. No one can explain to me how there is so much water.
three
I haven't been able to post pictures on this, my tiny stupid blog, and I have been so enraged I have not been able to bring myself even to look at my own page. Rage. Anger. Don't know whether to pay money to stupid blogger so as to be able to post pictures or chuck it all and start a new blog on a new platform. Advice? Counsel? Opinions?
four
shock. I'm not ready for Christmas. I thought I was, but then I looked around and realized I'm Not At All. So am sitting here in my bed thinking of maybe going on a holiday from reality.
fiveAm more and more a proponent of quick public just execution. Who's with me? Or at least with me to pray for these families. Lord Have Mercy. And mercy for Mali, where its just getting worse and worse and worse.
six
In light of the maybe no picture no blogging thing, Follow me on Instagram! and friend me on Facebook. I would find the links but I'm seriously on my last minutes.
seven
I guess God wants me to go look at the massive puddle of water. There goes my charge! pip pip, sob

Sunday, December 09, 2012

So last week, you might remember, we not only entered a
New Church Year with the beginning of Advent, we spent it talking about the
Beheading of John the Baptist. I myself came away feeling, and I know some of
you concurred with me, that the idea of feeling honored by an ignoble and
gruesome death was rather a stretch, and we, me, I long for no such honor.
However, such a contemplation is well within the bounds of a Godly Advent
Observance. Sure most of us under the height of three feet are really Waiting
for Santa, and Waiting to Remember that Jesus was Born. But a true advent
observance looks forward to the Second Coming of Christ. When Jesus first came
into the world as the Light, he overcame the Darkness of Sin and Death. But he
did not obliterate it. He calls us every day to push it back, to live in His
Light. When he comes again in Glory His Light will be so great that there will
no more be need of a sun or a moon, for we will look on him and be satisfied.
It was that hope and trust and love that allowed John the Baptist to speak and
then finally to die.

So today we pick up in the wake of that
great murder and tragedy at another Feast, if you would open your Bibles to
Mark 6. Whereas last week the feast was at night, celebrating a man working
hard to attain and keep his own honor and glory, a feast of the high up and
proud and mighty that Mary sang about in her Magnificat, a feast wherein there
was at first a great deal of wine and then finally too much, a feast that
debased a young girl and finally ended in murder, today we have its opposite.

Let’s begin in verse 30, the Disciples,
having gone out two by two returned to Jesus to report on all that had
happened. And they are exhausted. They’ve done a new kind of work, they’ve
relied completely on God for everything, and they’ve seen results—the Word went
out, signs and wonders were performed. And. They. Are. Tired. And Jesus plans
to take them to a Desolate Place to Rest. The same kind of Desolate Place we
have seen before, the wilderness where God forms his people, gives them an
identity, draws them out to woo them and care for them and speak to them, the
Wilderness where Jesus himself goes to commune with and to be fed by his
Father. Jesus wants them to Rest and so they get in a boat, not, most likely as
we will see from what happens, to go across the lake, but to go along the shore
looking for a place to be alone, to regain strength and energy, to recuperate.

Often, when we are really tired and weary,
it is easy to go on to the next thing, to go to the next busyness, or to go in
heavily for “leisure” as in doing some kind of activity, without really
resting, dwelling with God, lying on the couch, resting. If you never stop and
rest, you’re saying to yourself and God, I’m stronger than You, You can’t
handle any of this without me, this all has to be done My Way.

So Jesus takes them to rest. But, verse
33, as they are going, some, Mark says, “recognize them”. The Greek implies not
recognized as in Who they were, but in what they were doing. The crowd knows
they are trying to get away and instead of saying, Oh yeah, they’ve worked
hard, they need to be alone, the crowd runs on ahead of them to purposefully
intercept them. The run is a kind of frenzied run, not like a gentle trot but a
crazy, running with all you’ve got run. This is all the crazier because,
remember, Jewish men didn’t run. Children ran. Maybe, but I doubt it, a woman
would run. But a Jewish man would walk in a dignified way wherever he had to
go. But here people from all the towns and villages are running to meet Jesus
on the beach when he lands. It might surprise you, but every time I read this,
my response and Jesus’ response to these crowds is exactly opposite from each
other. Jesus gets out of the boat and “has compassion”, this is a deep gut
compassion that is only used about Jesus in the NT, not just feeling sorry for,
but a physical reaction in the stomach, for, writes Mark, ‘they were like sheep
without a shepherd.’

Sheep without a shepherd are dead
sheep. Sheep, apparently, cannot survive without a shepherd. If they fall on
their backs they can’t turn over. If they are not led in a group, or a flock,
they scatter and get lost. If they are not led to the right kind of water, as
in water that isn’t moving, they die of thirst. If they are not brought to
grass, they are not intelligent enough to find it themselves. Sheep without a
shepherd do not go on living for very long. The frenzied crazed running of the
crowd to meet Jesus are like sheep—they
are helpless and sick and directionless and they will go on this way to death
unless they have a shepherd. Don’t look at this crowd of sheep from the
outside. You have just been running with everyone to meet Jesus. You know what
he has done and can do and you are exhausted and harassed. You frequently fling
your priorities into the wrong order and neglect what is most important. You
have broken and ruined relationships that need healing and repair. You make
poor decisions about your body and health. You neglect the word of God and
choose to live in darkness and sin. And yet, you are here, seeking a shepherd,
seeking the one who can give you life and direction and health. Praise God,
praise God that Jesus doesn’t get out of the boat and say, ‘You jerks, leave me
alone to rest. Haven’t I given you enough?’ NO, he gets out of the boat and he
has compassion.

So, in his compassion, what does he do?

He begins to teach. Verse 34. Here, not
turning all these sheep away, he gets out and begins to teach them. Luke tells
us that he ‘Spoke to them about the kingdom of God.’ A frenzied crowd assembled
on the beach to get close to Jesus and he begins to teach them and goes on
teaching them about the kingdom of God. We know he goes on teaching because
Mark finally says ‘the hour was late’, Matthew says it was evening. You know,
the sun begins to wane, dusk is settling in. If you were at home you would be
lighting lamps against the oncoming night and be well into your supper preparations.
If you had little children they would definitely be crying by now. But here
they are, in a desolate place. And the disciples, who haven’t had a rest, and
who have had to listen to a long time of teaching, probably stuff they’ve all
heard before and maybe even said themselves on their recent mission trip, have
to interrupt the teaching to get Jesus to stop because everyone will be hungry.
This is a kind of clash, a kind of collision that goes on every day in the
church. On the one hand, the spiritual teaching and nourishment of the gospel
is preeminent. And if we were all perfect and in our right minds we would
always be strengthened by and attentive to the Word of Christ. And we would
offer it freely and completely to anyone who comes in here and everyone we meet
outside. But the body is frail, the mind dim. After a long morning of teaching
and worship, we drink coffee and eat lunch. After a long day of study and work,
you sit down and eat sensibly and chew each mouthful. God created the mind and
heart AND the body, and so he taught AND healed the sick. How sensible of the
disciples—it is a brief bright moment of sanity for them that vanishes quickly—to
hear the murmuring of the crowd and go to Jesus and actually interrupt him. However,
we can read their ongoing fatigue which manifests itself as irritation.

‘Send the crowds away into the towns
and villages so that they can buy something to eat,’ they tell Jesus.

‘You give them something to eat’
reposts Jesus. This is the call, isn’t it? This is the critical moment in your
life with Jesus. You’ve already given him yourself, you’ve given him your whole
self, and then you see something that needs doing in the Kingdom of God,
something comes to your attention, and you go to Jesus and pray about it, and
he says ‘you do it’. And What do you do then? There’s work to be done, the call
is there, what do you do? Because every time Jesus calls you to do something,
you’re going to look at yourself, and look at Jesus, and look at the job and
see plainly and clearly that you don’t have what it takes to do it. One option
is to argue with Jesus about it, or even be sarcastic.

What! Shall we go and buy 200 denarii
worth of bread and give it to them to eat? That’s like a whole year’s wages for
a day laborer, and maybe the amount of money they had on them collectively.
Maybe Judas jangled the money bag and rolled his eyes. This is how I respond
when I discover something else Jesus wants me to do. What! Shall I just Stop
Everything I’m doing and go over and do that Even Though I have six children
and a house and, for heaven’s sake, I’m HOME SCHOOLING. Or. I can’t possibly do
that because it’s not HUMANLY possible. If you try to answer the call of Jesus
without going through this step of discovering that if you try to do it
yourself, you will fail, then you will miss the point of who Jesus is and why
we all follow him. To make sure the disciples don’t miss it, Jesus tells them
to go see how many loaves exist among the crowd.

So, there’s this huge crowd, out in the
middle of nowhere, a crowd that is so needy, so desperate for help, that when
they saw Jesus trying to get away from them And Rest, stopped everything they were
doing to catch up with him. Stopped things, maybe, like working to make a
living, cleaning the house, taking care of children, doing the regular things
of life. Nobody stopped to grab some food. In the whole crowd there seems to be
only one thoughtful mother who happened to send her child to see Jesus with
five loaves and two fish. We learn from John that a small boy had this amount
of food on him. The loaves aren’t big, they’re little flat breads, maybe the size
of crackers, and the fish are preserved or pickled maybe the size of a sardine.
This is the ordinary lunch of an ordinary little boy roaming over the Galilean countryside.
And it’s all there is in the entire crowd. And then, this is so awesome, Jesus
takes the kid’s lunch.

This is how poor we are. This is how
desperate we are for Jesus. The little that we have is not nearly enough and
sometimes even what we have, or think we have, Jesus takes away. My mom and dad
live like this. I’d watch them, as a child, counting up what was needed and
then counting up what they had, seeing the great gap, and then someone coming
to the door in great great need and having to give away the little that there
was. It happens to me now with my time and energy. I look at what Jesus has called
me to do. I look at who I am. I count up the difference and see the great lack
and then something I didn’t account for comes and takes the little I thought I
had. I think, in this country, we have so much. None of us have ever been
sitting in a big stretch of wilderness with absolutely nothing to eat and
nowhere to get it. We do not know that we cannot sustain our own lives. That if
God did not provide in a common way, grace—the rotation of seasons and the
order of the universe, and did not also hold all of it together in himself,
sustaining our lives, giving us our very breath—then we would fall to nothing. Here
we are, all here in this crowd together—no lunch, no life.

So he takes the bread and then he,
verse 39, commanded them to all sit down on, what Mark now reveals, is green
grass, a green pasture. The Lord, the good shepherd, is standing in the midst
of his flock, arranging the flock in the pasture into groups of hundreds and
fifties. The Greek, might be better rendered in English, ‘He commanded them all
to recline—as one reclines at table, with the feet spread out, forming three
sides of a square, so as to be able to be served as guests would be at a feast—to
recline in open squares upon the green grass. And they reclined in squares that
looked like flower garden plots, by hundreds and fifties. The word ‘ranks’
literally means ‘a garden bed’. But the ranks also indicate the groupings of
the people of Israel as they went through the Dessert on the way to the Promised
Land, the wilderness where God sustained them with heavenly bread, with manna.

And then, taking the loaves, Jesus
looked up to heaven and gave a blessing, probably the regular blessing, a
thanksgiving for the fruit of the earth, except he looks up to his Father
instead of looking down, and then, at once, Jesus broke the bread, and then
kept on giving bread to the disciples who passed it and the fish to the people.
These poor tired disciples having to pass and pass and pass out bread to the
people so that everyone was satisfied—everyone ate and ate and ate and ate. And
then gathering up what was left and filling 12 baskets full. And then Mark
gives us the punch line—There were 5 thousand men. Matthew adds the line, ‘besides
women and children’. Five thousand men, maybe another five thousand women, at
least that of children--Scholars say a conservative estimation of the crowd
that ate and were satisfied was between 15 and 20 thousand.

This is the last big public display of
Jesus’ glorious divinity. Gazing out over the crowd, some wonder if the people knew
what had happened. The disciples, laboring to distribute this perfect bread,
brought forth by the Creator of All Things, saw what happened but we will
discover next Sunday that they did not understand it. Some saw the sign and
wanted to make Jesus king then and there. We know that the bread was delicious,
that it was extraordinary. John writes that in the morning, discovering that
Jesus and the disciples had gotten away, the crowd tracked them all the way
back to Capernaum and demanded breakfast. Then, when Jesus offered himself as the food that they needed, his own
flesh and his own blood, they, and even the meager group of his 100 or so
disciples were so repulsed and horrified that they all left. Only the twelve,
one of whom is a traitor, stay with him.

The impoverished, frantic, dying sheep run to and fro,
looking for hope and help but when that hope and help turns out to be Jesus
himself and not free bread and free health, the sheep scatter.

Don’t run away from Jesus, this morning. Let him be your
food. As you shop for Christmas, or worry about your bills, or consider that
food that you need here and now, let Jesus be your Shepherd. When he calls you
to a task, discover that you do not have what you need, that you need him. When
he calls your name, go to him. Soon he will come again and gather his flock
from all time and space, from all the corners of the world into a New Pasture,
to a Perfect Heavenly Feast where the One Flock will live together under One
Shepherd. Where there will be no more need for the sun nor moon because Christ
will be our Light.

Monday, December 03, 2012

Took a week off blogging to have rather an unpleasant cold, and also, it was the second week of our school holiday in which we relished the few remaining days of Matt's parents being here and I generally Did Nothing except
Decorate the Tree (I know...I know...Its such a liturgical failure, but it might also be the Miracle of Advent)
Complete All My Christmas Shopping (except that stupid stupid Optimus Prime Remote Control, blast that thing)
Clean The House
Read Matt's Talk for IV Four or Five Times
Read An Actual Book (or start to anyway).

And so now I feel much better and am looking into a future I've never seen before: Advent With Maybe, Is It Possible, Time To Celebtrate It.

Sorry about all the Entitlements. Usually they're spread over a whole week and not gathered together in one tiny backward looking moment.

I just love advent, and I hate hate hate shopping. This time, however, the shopping was generally pleasurable because I had 1. the Internet (which I love of course) and 2. Matt's Mom (who is focused and creative). And because of God being gracious and us working hard at not spending any for a long time, we had, I'm so embarrassed to say it out loud, Money. So, for the first time ever, I have been unshackled from the exhausting and guilt ridden enterprise of trying to Make Things For People. I know when the apocalypse comes and the grid goes away we'll all be sitting in our cold hovels sewing and weaving again, but for one brief bright shiny moment, I've been able to fling down the false narrative that I Can Be Creative Too. Whatever. Going somewhere and buying something beautiful that someone else made was a thrilling experience and I will treasure it for a long time.

The other great gift that came with Getting It All Done is that I can concentrate on actually educating my precious, hemmm, children and remembering to light the candles at night and play the music and read the texts which we love so much but which usually I'm too stressed and angry to remember about. It may be, that in some far distant future, when the children can all put their own coats on, we will Hand Make.....bla bla bla. Why Am I Being Defensive About This? No more pinterest for me.

On that note, I'm going to go fight with blogger about whether or not I can upload pictures. Cheerio!